Minneapolis, December 12, 2013— For the past 26 years, Out There has brought startling, vital, provocative, and often joyous new forms of theatrical expression to the Twin Cities. Beginning as a modest two-weekend series held in the depths of Minnesota’s winter at the Southern Theater, Out There has grown into a full-fledged monthlong festival featuring new global performances, workshops, dialogue sessions, and other activities.

Starting its second quarter-century with an entirely fresh roster of worldwide radical innovators—Holland’s Wunderbaum (with the Los Angeles Poverty Department), Japan’s Kuro Tanino (and his company Niwa Gekidan Penino), Berlin/France’s Clément Layes (Public in Private), and Chile’s Lola Arias—the arresting lineup reflects the expansive array of styles and strategies that make up today’s vanguard international performance scene. This season of Out There runs Thursdays–Saturdays, January, 9–February,1, in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater.

Inside Out There: Workshops with the Artists
Saturdays, January 11, 18, 25 and February 1, 11am
William and Nadine McGuire Theater

Each week of Out There includes a unique interactive workshop or educational opportunity on the stage of the William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Inside Out There offers an opportunity to get the inside story from visiting Out There artists and to participate in classes and workshops with them. Advance reservations highly encouraged. To reserve a spot, call 612.375.7600 or click walkerart.org. Admission is $6 ($4 Walker members) for individual events. Purchase the series of four: $20 ($12).

Get More Out There…

Drinks & Discussions in the Balcony Bar

Meet the artists, talk about the show, and enjoy a beer, wine, or a specialty cocktail (featuring Prairie Organic vodka). Open before and after all performances.

Thursdays
Following the performance, meet the artists, talk about the show, and enjoy drinks on the upper balcony of the William and Nadine McGuire Theater.

Fridays
Get the backstory during post-show Q and A’s with the artists, performing arts curators, and special guests.

Saturdays
After the performance, head to the Balcony Bar to join a discussion or just listen in as others hash it out at our popular SpeakEasy conversations. Hosted by local artists and Walker tour guides.

All Month: Free Gallery Admission with Paid Ticket
Enjoy free admission to the Walker galleries with your paid ticket within one week of the performance date.

Single Tickets
$18 ($15) Thursday; $22 ($18) Friday–Saturday
All performances and Inside Out There workshops take place in the Walker’s William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Tickets and information: 612.375.7600 or walkerart.org/tickets

Save with a Series Package
Ticket package includes four Out there shows: $70 ($60 Walker members).
Offer not available online; to purchase, visit the box office or call 612.375.7600.

“Fresh and original … [Wunderbaum] is political and raw, its actors also rockers.” —Los Angeles Times

This frenetic stage experiment by two groundbreaking theater companies—Skid Row performance group Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) and Dutch collective Wunderbaum—examines the realities of contemporary healthcare in a raucous and engrossing “ficto-mentary” of love, life, money, and death.

Aided by a healthy dose of humor, Hospital draws on the clichés of serialized medical dramas as well as real-life encounters with patients, doctors, healthcare professionals, and reformers in both the United States and the Netherlands. With intelligence, compassion, and absorbing stagecraft, Hospital shrewdly sends up a genre while its cast creates a hallucinatory exposé of free-market healthcare.

Commissioned by the Walker Art Center with support provided by the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Coproduced by Wunderbaum and LAPD in collaboration with REDCAT. Co-commissioned by Rotterdamse Schouwburg with the support by AMMODO and the National Theater Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).

Inside Out There: LAPD and Wunderbaum
Saturday, January 11, 11 am

Actors from LAPD and Wunderbaum invite you to join them to improvise a new alternative healthcare system. Do you smoke? Are you old or terminal? Bring your vegan neighbor and fantasize with us about how we could create a new bottom-up plan! Fiction allowed. Open to all. Limited to 30 participants.

“Kuro Tanino’s troupe is a one-man psychological trip into the underbelly of our desires.” —Tokyo Stages

The spirit of Out There is alive and well in this demented yet inspired piece by Japan’s Kuro Tanino of Niwa Gekidan Penino, a psychotherapist turned director and one of the most original artistic voices in theater today.

Equally enigmatic and erotic, The Room Nobody Knows is a dreamlike, psychologically twisted tale of two brothers and their secret desires. Phallus-laden layers of abstraction fuel this claustrophobic and comically (psycho)analytical work replete with pig faces, plastic heads, and hidden compartments. This quizzical tall tale of people living in close quarters plays out in a meticulously constructed miniature set placed on the McGuire stage.

Very limited seating. In Japanese with English surtitles.

The five-city U.S. tour of The Room Nobody Knows is produced and organized by Japan Society, New York, and is supported by The Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program, Arts Council Tokyo, and The Saison Foundation.

Inside Out There: Niwa Gekidan Penino
Saturday, January 18, 11 am

After watching a video by director Kuro Tanino, participants will act out a surgery scene without words. Tanino will provide instruments used in medical operations for this exercise. This workshop is for actors or those with performance experience. Limited to 10 participants.

Humorous and conceptual, this brilliant solo by Clément Layes mixes performance art, philosophy, and dance with Chaplinesque virtuosity. Balancing a glass of water on his head for the duration of the performance, he takes us on a contemplative journey involving habit and expectation, the absurdities of life, and overlooked small moments of beauty. With a background in circus arts, dance, and philosophy, French/German physical theater artist Layes presents a remarkable physical feat and gives us an utterly charming piece that metaphorically mixes visual arts, choreography, and deeper thinking around the daily life of objects.

Support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr.

Inside Out There: Public in Private /Clément Layes

Saturday, January 25, 11 am

Through structured games with performance artist Clément Layes, this charmingly philosophical workshop creates theater and choreography with everyday objects. Each participant is asked to bring an object that they use daily to imagine what dreams it might imply, invite, or induce. Open to all. Back to Back Theatre

Lola Arias: The Year I Was Born
Thursday–Saturday, January 30–February 1, 8 pm

“The experience is soul-crushing, it shakes you to the core.” —La Segunda

Reconstructing scenes from the past in order to understand their future, 11 young performers born in the 1970s and 80s during the Pinochet dictatorship use photos, letters, tapes, old clothes, and personal stories from their families to uncover erased memories. Political and playful, real and surreal, the intertwined tales in Lola Arias’s The Year I Was Born toggle between reality and fiction, exploring the endless variety of perspectives from Chile’s most complex era. Probing humor, telling truths, and live rock shape this moving piece about the unsteady balance between private lives and national identity. In Spanish with English surtitles.

Support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Touring support is made possible in part by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile and by the National Performance Network (NPN) Performing Americas Program. Lola Arias: El Año en que nací / The year I was born is a production of Fundación Teatro a Mil, Santiago, Chile (FITAM).

Inside Out There: Lola Arias
Saturday, February 1, 11 am

Lola Arias’s cast members help transform real-life history into compelling theater. Bring five documents with you (photos, papers, tapes) from someone’s life (yours, your parents’, someone you know, or someone you’d like to know) and find out how this can be a source of inventive storytelling. Limited to 15 participants.

Acknowledgments
The Walker Art Center’s performing arts programs are made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Performing Arts Fund, the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Producers’ Council
Performing Arts programs and commissions at the Walker are generously supported by members of the Producers’ Council: Russell Cowles; Sage Cowles; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Henry Pillsbury; Emily Maltz; Dr. William W. and Nadine M. McGuire; Leni and David Moore, Jr.; Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney; and Frances and Frank Wilkinson.

The Walker Art Center is located at 1750 Hennepin Avenue—where Hennepin meets Lyndale—one block off Highways I-94 and I-394, in Minneapolis.

For tickets and public information, call 612.375.7600 or visit walkerart.org. Stay connected via your mobile device and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.